


What It Looks Like

by roquentine



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Drunk Sherlock, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-30 22:27:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8551603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roquentine/pseuds/roquentine
Summary: A bit of drunk fluff resulting from the dialogue prompt "It's not what it looks like."





	

**Author's Note:**

> (Originally part of a single post of [Tumblr](http://roquentine19.tumblr.com/) ficlets that just got too unwieldy.)

John doesn’t get out of the clinic until after 1am. It’s the Friday night after the last day of exams at the local university, so he agreed to a later shift to help with the kids who got a little too drunk (or a lot too drunk) and missed a step somewhere, resulting in a cut or scrape or occasional sprain. He dresses their wounds and doles out paracetamol like candy, then helps them back outside to a hopefully slightly more sober friend and sends them on their way. No lectures; he was a uni student once, too.

But it was a long day, and by the time he pushes through the front door at 221B, he’s looking forward to a quick shower and then crawling into bed and curling up behind Sherlock’s back and sleeping for as long as he’ll let him.

Instead, as John trudges up the stairs, he finds both doors to the flat flung wide open, spilling all the light from every lamp they own into the hallway. He stops at the kitchen door and tries to make sense of what he sees.

On the table are at least eight different open liquor bottles, and four highball glasses, three of them drained of whatever their contents were. There’s also an open and half-empty jar of maraschino cherries, a lime cut haphazardly into bits, a peeled lemon with no sign of the peel anywhere, and a single olive on a toothpick balanced on the mouth of one of the liquor bottles.

And there’s one Sherlock.

He’s sitting at the table in his pajamas and dressing gown. Well, not sitting, exactly, but resting his head on one arm that is outstretched along the table’s length, watching the liquid in the remaining glass swirl around as he stirs it with a swizzle stick. When he realizes John is standing there, he sits up with a start and nearly falls out of the chair.

“It’s not what it looks like…” Sherlock slurs, blinking like he can’t remember where he is just at the moment.

“Really,” John says. “What do you think I think it looks like?”

“I think you think I think it _looks_ like…” - Sherlock regards the table, thinks with his face, and then spreads his hands triumphantly - “I’ve opened a bar in our kitchen.”

“Pretty accurate assessment.”

“Well,” Sherlock says, pointing at nothing in particular, “I’ll have you know it is a very inaccurate ashess… ashmess…” His face screws up in concentration.

“Sherlock,” John is bone tired but he can’t help but laugh. “What are you doing?”

“An experiment.” Sherlock seems momentarily surprised at the fact that he’s pronounced this correctly. “An experiment,” he says again, quietly but proudly, looking around the kitchen for kudos from anyone else he may find there.

“What kind of experiment?” John says, adopting the same tone of voice he just used for the last four hours with the drunk students, one of exaggerated genuine interest. Trying to have the most ridiculous conversation possible is the most fun you can have as a completely sober person talking to a completely drunk person. He digs in the drawer for their own bottle of paracetamol, because apparently he has one more dose to dole out, then finds a clean glass in the cupboard and holds it under the tap.

“An experiment with… beverages.”

“A beverages experiment.”

“Yesh.”

“Got it. Take these,” John says, dropping the pills into Sherlock’s hand, “and drink this,” setting the glass down in front of him. Sherlock throws the pills into his mouth, then picks up the glass with both hands and downs it in one go.

“Delicious!” he declares, then narrows his eyes at the bottles. “Which one was that?”

“It was one part water, and one part water.” John says this like it makes complete sense, and Sherlock nods like it does as well. John refills the glass and hands it back. “Slower this time, please.”

Sherlock glares and takes a tiny petulant sip. “Honestly, John, I can hold… my… _water_.” He giggles, and takes another tiny sip, except he’s still giggling, and he chokes on it.

John slaps him on the back as he coughs through it, then sits down at the table. “So, what was your hypothesis?” he asks, just to see if he can get Sherlock to attempt the word.

“I have to be honest,” Sherlock says, and John is seriously disappointed, “I don’t… really… remember.”

John smiles and says all of this in one smooth, conversational, Sherlock-making-a-deduction breath: “You don’t really remember why you retrieved every liquor bottle from our cabinet, arranged them on the table, poured some measure of the contents of each of them into four different vessels, retrieved all the popular cocktail garnishes from various locations throughout the refrigerator, added them to the vessels in multiple combinations, and proceeded to ingest them over what I’m estimating was the last hundred and twenty minutes?”

Sherlock blinks at him, slowly, three times, inhales thoughtfully, and replies, “What was the question?”

“Do you remember your results?” John asks calmly.

Sherlock scoffs. “Of _course_ , John. You see,” he says, clearing his throat and getting down to business, “there are brown liquids in clear bottles and clear liquids in brown bottles, but there are _also_ brown liquids in brown bottles and clear liquids in clear bottles, and _this_ one…” he points dramatically, “…is _blue_.” His face is utterly serious. He blinks at John again, meaningfully.

John has tried to maintain a poker face, he really has, but at this he absolutely bursts out laughing. “Well done. Finish your water, and let’s go to bed.”

“A capital idea!” Sherlock shouts. He downs the water and stands up and immediately sits back down again, his arm stretching back along the table, his head lowering alongside it. “I might… just… sleep here, I think.”

“No, you won’t,” John says, grabbing an arm and hoisting him up and maneuvering him around the table toward the bedroom. “You’ll be much more comfortable in bed.”

“Bed!” Sherlock shouts, again. “Yes. Bed is good. You, John, are in my bed, usually.”

“Yes, that’s right, I am in your bed usually.”

“Not tonight though.” They’re halfway to the bedroom and Sherlock drifts into the wall and leans there, resting his head, and John stops with him for a second. “You were definitely not in my bed tonight. I looked everywhere.”

“Did you forget I was working late, love?” John reaches up and ruffles his hair back from his forehead, then cups his face gently, stroking a cheekbone with his thumb.

“Of course not, I didn’t _forget_ , I just didn’t… remember, I suppose, so I got up to have a drink.” Sherlock lifts his head from the wall and looks at John through wide eyes. “I think,” he whispers loudly, “I might have had more than one.” He gives a serious nod.

“Yeah, I think you might have done,” John says, urging him on into the bedroom. He tries to keep Sherlock standing steadily while pulling back the covers, then lets him sit down on the edge of the bed.

“No, wait, this is your side,” Sherlock says as he falls sideways into the pillow. He makes a half-hearted attempt to pull his legs onto the mattress but it doesn’t quite work and he seems resigned to sleeping in this position.

“How about we keep you closest to the toilet tonight,” John says, lifting Sherlock’s legs at the ankles and tucking them in carefully. He pulls the covers up around his shoulders, and strokes his head one more time.

“A capital idea,” Sherlock says, and snores on his next inhale.


End file.
